Tuesday, September 30, 2014

This week was so great! We had a baptism on Tuesday for a girl that has been taking the lessons for about 6 months. She decided to tell her aunt and uncle that she lives with who are members, and it turned out great! She had her uncle baptize her and her aunt made all the programs and brought refreshments and everything! They made it so much better than any missionary could and I am so grateful for them! There were a lot of nonmembers there so that was pretty exciting! We had brought out a jumpsuit for her and she told us that her grandma had actually bought her a white dress from Deseret Book. She looked so beautiful and she just glowed the whole time. She didn't want to admit how great she felt afterward, but we could definitely tell :) We got to go to the temple on Friday which was so great! The Portland temple is so gorgeous and it was much needed! I felt so refreshed after we got back and it was just what I needed! There was another YSA baptism on Saturday that we got to go to as well. It was in Portland but she lives in Vancouver, so she will start coming to the YSA next week. The baptism was great! I love going over to Portland because people there are crazy. You always see something interesting on pretty much every street. I just love it though. It keeps things interesting :)

We are getting a senior couple in the YSA this week, so when they come there will be 3 sets of missionaries in our ward. We are so excited for them to come because we have a lot for them to do! It will for sure make things a little easier and it will help us continue to be more successful. Added plus, senior couples are so cute and funny so that will be a lot of fun to work with them! Not much else has happened, but it was for sure a week full of miracles. Time is already flying by! I have been out on a mission for almost 6 weeks and I have been in Washington for about 4 weeks now! I understand now when people say that on a mission, the days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days. It is so true, missionary time is crazy! I am so excited for general conference this weekend! General Conference is like Christmas to missionaries! It gives us so many opportunities to invite people and gives us something to invite them to!

The weather here is so beautiful! It has been pretty overcast this week and it has cooled off a lot, but I love it! It is finally cardigan and boot weather! :D I was definitely called here for a reason. The weather makes me happy!

I love you all and I hope you all have a great week! Enjoy conference and let me know what you get out of it! :)

Friday, September 26, 2014

What a week! The work is truly hastening here! We got a phone call
from a less active and she was saying that she had a friend who was
basically homeless that had been staying with her and she wanted us to
come teach her. We went over for the lesson and the girl was super
sweet. She is only 19 and has had such a hard life and just moved here
from Arizona and really has nothing. She told us that she needed to
turn her life around and that she is open minded about what we had to
teach her. We started the lesson and she immediately started crying.
The spirit was so strong and she agreed to be baptized in November!
She came to church yesterday and was such a rock star. She was so
excited to come but she had the stomach flu and she came anyway. She
just wanted to be there so bad! In relief society she was
participating and making all these great comments so I am so excited
to continue working with her! Also at church, this girl just showed up
and came up to us and asked how she can become a member of our church.
We were trying not to let our excitement show and she agreed to start
taking the lessons! It is a miracle because on Saturday we had a
little "pep rally" because as a mission, our goal is to find 400 new
investigators within the next 10 days! It is a big deal and there have
already been so many miracles! On Saturday I had the opportunity to
attend a baptism, which was one of the best I have been to. This guy
has been investigating the church for 3 years but couldn't get
baptized because he had fines to pay off first. So he has been
attending the singles ward for 3 years and he finally got them paid
off! So many people came to the baptism and it was so amazing! We have
2 baptisms this week, Kaili and Jessie! My first baptisms :) it will
for sure be a great week! Our ward is so amazing and so supportive.
The ward missionaries help so much and they truly are such great
members. I hope I get to stay in the YSA for a long time because there
is so much work to do here. It is hard for sure, but it is so
rewarding. The weather here has been really warm and dry (today is the
first overcast day since I have been here) and the trees are so
beautiful! It is so gorgeous here and so green! I love it so much!
Well, not much else is happening. Just working hard and staying busy.
I love you all so much!

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Crazy to believe I have almost been here for 2 weeks! I am absolutely
loving the YSA ward! It is such a different kind of work here since we
are looking for such a narrow group of people but it is so rewarding!
And the members here definitely take care of us. We have dinner
appointments every night and they either make us food or take us out.
We are so spoiled. The weirdest things have happened this week that
are hard to put into words. Let's just say that after a conversation
with a less active member we definitely felt the power of satan over
her and the deceit she was being fed. We came home after that with the
weirdest feelings and asked the members we lived with for a priesthood
blessing and felt so much better after. One of our investigators has
been struggling with the word of wisdom and she has been sick so we
asked the elders to give her a blessing and it was so amazing! She had
so much faith and the spirit was so strong and she was crying after
because she felt so amazing! We also got her to go to the relief
society activity craft thing and she loved it! But we still can't get
her to go to church! Another one of our investigators asked to move
her baptismal date to September 23 instead of December 23 and I am so
excited for her! Everyone already thinks she is a member and she is
going to byu in January so she figured she might as well not wait. But
she has such a solid testimony and is so great! One night at a dinner
appointment with a RM and her mom, they tried energy healing Sister
Thomas which was so entertaining to watch her expressions and it got
really weird so I told them it was time for us to go. We got in the
car and started laughing so hard because it was SUPER weird. She said
that weird things follow her on her mission and I can definitely see
that in action. Haha. It keeps me on my toes! Not much else has
happened, we had a zone BBQ today which was super fun but we didn't
have time to do anything today, so I have to keep this a little short!
Thanks to everyone who has emailed me, and to my one sister that
emailed me. I love hearing from everyone but that's hard to do when
nobody writes me. (Guilt trip) I love you all! Thanks for the support!
Sister Henderson

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Wow, this week has been crazy! So on Tuesday we had to get up at 3 am and finish packing to get to the bus to go to the airport at 4:30 and we barely made it! We flew into Oregon and then we went to the mission office to eat lunch and fill out paperwork where we had our interviews and got our ipads set up. That night they sent us out with other missionaries and I went with two sisters and we just went tracting. It was so much fun and I gave out two books of mormon which was awesome.That night we just spent the night at the mission home with president and sister Taylor. They are amazing and I can tell that they are going to be great for me. On wednesday I went to my area, I am in Vancouver in the Clark YSA ward with sister Thomas! YSA is such a different experience and we have the biggest area in the mission, so we get a car and we get more miles on it every month since we have to drive so far everywhere. There are elders in the YSA as well so we teach the girls and they teach the boys in the ward.Since we have to rely on referrals from other missionaries, we don't get a lot of success tracting since we just have to refer them to the other missionaries that cover their areas. We have a few investigators, and we have 3 that we put on date. One of the investigators, Amanda, is so ready to be baptized and wants to do it this month, but the problem is that she needs to get married first. She lives with her boyfriend and she said he is going to propose any day now and then they want to get married within the next couple of weeks.So we will see if she actually gets baptized this month, but after they get married we have to refer her to a family ward where she will get baptized. But I am so excited for her and she is so excited and ready to be baptized! Another one of our investigators wanted to get baptized on December 23, 2017 and we were really confused so we asked her about it. She said she wanted to get baptized on the 23rd of any month and the next month with the 23rd on a saturday was on December 23,2017. We had to explain to her that it didn't have to be a saturday so she was really excited about that and agreed to get baptized on December 23 of this year! :) We are going to try to convince her to move it up a month or two, but hey, it's better than in 3 years! We don't get a lot of investigators since we are a singles ward, but a lot of the work we do is with the less actives. We hunt down all of the less active sisters in the ward and teach them and try to get them to come back. We really do have a lot of success and we had 4 less actives come to church yesterday!

We had meetings before church yesterday and the power went out at like 8 at the church building yesterday morning. We had our meetings by the windows where there was some light and we walked by the chapel where there was a sacrament meeting going on, and I have to say it looked really creepy. They all had lanterns and their phone lights on and they were passing the sacrament in the dark. We laughed about it and then realized we had investigators coming to church for the first time that day and we tried to imagine what they would think. Probably that we worship satan or something. So we prayed that the lights would come on by 11 when our ward started and the lights finally came on at about 10;30. Huge miracle!

We live with the old bishop of the singles ward and he just got released last week but they are letting us stay! They are so sweet and take good care of us! Since most of the singles live with their parents, we get fed very well. We have dinner appointments every night so we never go hungry. If they don't feed us, they take us out to dinner, so it is all good! The singles ward is awesome and the members in it are great and so much fun! It is fun to be with people my age! Sister Thomas is such an amazing missionary and has done so much for this ward. She has been in this area for 6 months and will end up finishing her mission here by the end of my training. I am so glad we get along and we have a ton in common so it is fun! She is hilarious and can always make me laugh but she is also a very hard worker! I am doing well and loving the missionary life! I love you all!